Moment in Time

Yesterday I had a small moment in time where I paused and thought to myself, "This [life] is good! God is good!" I wanted to share it. Last evening the kids were both getting cleaned up before bed. When Shawn was done in the tub he stood up and threw his arms out toward me. I lifted him out with the towel wrapped around him and as is his custom he sits down in my lap and snuggles in tight saying, "Brr! Brrr!" As I hugged by little boy, I looked down at the small carpet we were on and saw his still wet little foot print. I was struck for a moment at how awesome it is that this little boy has been entrusted to us to take care of. We are privileged to get to see these wet little foot prints, the wide, bright-eyed smiles, the dimples, the giggles, the noises of brother and sister playing happily in the sunshine on the back porch, watching the kids pick strawberries straight from our garden, laughing when Shawn eats one that is completely green . . . . God has given us these moments! God has given us these children! What a privilege! What an awesome God! If I am smiling at a wet footprint and find joy in that, imagine the amount of joy good feels too. The God who created us allows us to share with Him in this joy.

Longer Than Anticipated Time Out

This evening Shawn decided my shoulder looked like a tasty treat so he decided to take a little nibble. I immediately took him to his room and shut the door. His door fits pretty tight and he hasn't quite got the leverage to open it making it a fantastic place to separate him for a bit. Well, I went to get him out a few moments later and the door would not open. The handle on his door is unlike the others in the house. It doesn't even match in color. It works with a key but there is no key for it. It's a small eyesore; obviously someone got a really cheap deal on a new door knob at some point. So I got Mark and he immediately wanted to kick the door in. I was like, "Oh no. No. Let's just stay calm." So I tried my hardest to coax Shawn in to figuring out how to turn the little lock on the inside. He couldn't reach it well so I told him to push his plastic toy box over to the door. Well, he got hurt doing that and started to cry. But it didn't sound too bad and he recovered quickly. So then I got him to get the pillows off the bed and stack them at the door which he actually did and I proceeded to talk him through the parts of the door handle. Um. . . it didn't work so well. He could not figure out how to turn the little lock piece and I'm not sure he ever even understood what little knob I was talking about. I had just moments before shut his window blinds in preparation for bedtime so we couldn't even go outside and see what he was doing. He started to cry so we got him some snacks and fed him under the door. That helped a lot. Mark got the drill and tried to drill holes through the base of the doorknob. That worked, but the doorknob still wouldn't budge. He tried prying the base of the knob off. That didn't work. He tried pounding a screwdriver through the middle of the knob with a mallet and that didn't work. Every so often Shawn would quietly call, "Hep me! Hep me!" Oh! It was sad. Finally Mark just took the mallet and busted the handel off and we still could not get the lock to budge. In the end guess how the door was opened? We said, "Okay Shawn move away. Go jump in your crib!" and Mark kicked the door in ripping part of the moulding off all the way from the top of the door frame to the floor! This doorknob was ridiculously strong! (I later took it apart and removed it from the door. I'm pretty sure this doorknob was meant to be on the front door of a home . . . not a child's bedroom.) And the first thing I said to Shawn was, "Are you going to bite again?" He said, "No!" immediately.

By the way, we have no idea how the door got locked. We've never found it locked before today. Of course it is our fault that we didn't get it replaced before today, but then if we had already done it, we wouldn't have had any excitement this evening.

Elise's Pre-school Graduation

As I drove Elise to school this morning I realized that I felt much the same way I did when I drove her to school on the very first morning. That morning back in September I was crying and blubbery . . . this time I held it together a bit more. But it was this feeling of sadness mixed with happiness. Elise asked me why I was sad. How do you explain to a kid that you're sad because they're growing up? That could cause some psychological trauma. "Mom liked me better when I was a baby. Hmmm . . . " Well, her graduation ceremony went very well and this time, unlike at their Christmas program, I had a working video camera. Yeah!!

Our Anniversary

We had such a blast celebrating our anniversary. We decided months ago that we would just stay in Salem instead of driving to Portland or somewhere else. Well we made reservations to stay at the ritziest hotel in Salem and the rest of the day was up in the air. We ended up taking a walk downtown and crossed the newly opened pedestrian bridge to West Salem. There's an old train trestle that's been sitting unused for years and finally plans were made to turn it in to a pedestrian bridge. It's great! The weather was beautiful so there were a lot of people out doing the same thing as us and also hanging out by the river down below. When we got to the other side we went to McDonald's and ordered sweet tea. Sweet tea in Oregon! Fantastic! It was only a buck and the thing was huge. What a simple treat. Then we actually went to the mall and went shopping. Mark helped me pick out a new dress. He even held my purse for me while I tried things on and hung out in the women's section near the dressing rooms so I could come out and show him each dress. What a nice guy. He really needed a new baseball cap and we found one 90% off! It says Budweiser on the back. Ha! Ha! You'd have to pay Mark to drink a Budweiser or any other beer for that matter. We went to antique shops downtown, got free slices of bread at Great Harvest and just tootled around. It was a great afternoon. That evening we went to Morton's Bistro for dinner. The food was good. We even tried their special soup of the day . . . a chilled black bean soup. When Mark ordered I had to make sure he heard the waitress correctly. "Did you catch that it's cold hun?" He was so adventurous! Later we met at the ritzy bar in the ritzy hotel for a ritzy "blind date." We tried to stay up late and watch Saturday Night Live but it was Justin Timberlake hosting and some horrible singer so we went to sleep. Oh! I forgot to mention we managed to squeeze eating Ben & Jerry's ice cream in there too! Yum!!

Deer in Our Back Yard & Bike Riding

We were enjoying a quiet morning a few days ago when Shawn suddenly pointed out the sliding glass door. Sure enough, there was a deer in our backyard hanging out with the neighbor cat. We probably have about 5 minutes of footage of the deer just walking around the yard and eventually finding it's way back to the front yard and across the neighbor's yard. Ever since Shawn loves saying, "Dee-er! Dee-er!"

Here is the beginning of Elise's bike ride on Monday evening, May 18th. She rode 2 miles!! Fortunately there is no video footage of me asking Elise to "slow down," "stop," "Mommy needs to rest!"

Bike Rider

A few weeks ago we took Elise's training wheels off her bike to see how she'd do. Mark took her down to the elementary school the first time and described it as, "A good first effort. It wasn't amazing." Since teaching a kid to ride a bike can be painful on a parent's back, I, being the shorter of the two of us became the helper from then on. So I took her out a week later and she did okay. I actually let go a few times. She probably went about 20 feet at the most before I had to rescue her again. The next time she did a little better . . . maybe 30 feet or so. Then she had bike day at school and I figured it wouldn't be a cool thing to send her off with just two wheels and a pat on the back for good luck. So I put the training wheels back on. She had a great time just getting to ride without crashing every 20-30 feet. Then a couple of days later we went out for a walk as a family and she rode her bike with the training wheels still on. Another great time for her to just have fun riding and not worry so much. So what's the count now? Three attempts with no training wheels then two days with them back on. This evening we took them off again and headed back down to the track. I couldn't believe the improvement. Elise was all of a sudden a bike rider!! She was just off and going. It was amazing! Next time she's out I'll have Mark videotape a bit and I'll attempt to get it on the Blog. But this kid had me sweating. There were times I wasn't even at a casual jog to keep up . . . I was out and out running and occasionally calling out, "Slow down!" And when she comes to a stop, she doesn't just slow down and stop. She pedals and pedals, then slams on the brake and skids out. She turns to look at me like, "No big deal Mom. It's all good."

What We've Been Up To Lately

Well, I haven't written anything for awhile and I don't have a fantastic story to tell so I'll just tell you all what we've been up to recently. Today Elise has her last soccer class. She's been doing a Parent-Tot soccer class for six weeks. She's begged for months and months to do soccer because she thought it looked so fun. So we finally were able to sign her up for some classes. Mark took her out and bought her own ball. I think she would tell you that the hardest part of soccer is telling her ball apart from everyone else's. :) She actually did really well I think. I got to accompany her to the final two classes and I think she was definitely above average. :)

Shawn said his first "sentence" two days ago. Here's where I need my mother or my English brainiac friend, Jen H. The "sentence" consisted of three words! A subject (?), object (?) and verb. No pronouns or anything fancy like that, but I'm still calling it a sentence. We were outside doing yard work and Shawn was happily enjoying some grapes for a snack. One got away from him and rolled down the driveway and across the street. He was very distraught. "Uh oh! Uh oh!" he kept repeating. I said to him, "It's okay Honey. A bird will come along and eat it." Then he said, "Bowd eee bape?"